As someone who is passionate about technology, this is my blog designed to help educate people about social media. As well, I want to use this social media forum to bring our growing tech community together.

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The power of education

Sitting at a back table at yesterday’s Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce’s Second Annual Mayor Cyber Cup Luncheon, I got a unique perspective into the transformational power of education from two mothers.

Sally Orsack and Tiffany Gibbons, parents of two Southwest High School Cyber Patriot competitors, told me how the program helped their students find a future career, thanks to the work of Arthur Celastin, the school’s coach.

“Mr C.” as his students called him has helped his students complete A Plus and Security Plus certification. Orsack’s son Taylor has completed both certification programs in his junior year.

Celastin has a unique story as well. An immigrant from Haiti, Celastin first started at the school as an IT systems integrator. With the help and encouragement of his principal, he began to offer classes into IT security.

Several days ago, officials from the Department of Defense and Homeland Security toured Southwest to get a perspective into how to create other programs like this in other American schools. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Guy M. Walsh, the senior executive with the U.S. Cyber Command’s Strategic Initiatives office and one of the folks who visited Southwest, said he hopes more schools will look at ways to expand their vocational training efforts to include cyber security.

For this to happen, the key to expanding this program is to find educators like Celastin. This year, 36 schools competed in the CyberPatriot program. Many had coaches who didn’t understand how to set up a firewall, but thanks to San Antonio security industries, technical coaches were found to help them.

While mentors help teachers manage these programs, schools have to create the labs to educate students. One of Celastin’s biggest challenges is dealing with his network administrators to create a virtual working environment to help his students learn. No school will want even a talented instructor like him to expose their network to security vulnerabilities. Yet, a local security firm helped his students get the computational resources to truly compete in the Cyber Patriot program.

Maj. Gen. Suzanne Vautrinot, the commander of 24th Air Force, noted that when she first began working in space satellite programs that her mother didn’t understand what she did for the military. That got a chuckle from Orsack and Gibbons.

Mayor Julian Castro, another speaker at yesterday’s luncheon said he hoped that San Antonio will expand to 50 teams next year. Such an effort bode wells for our future cyber warriors. Yet, for the transformational power of such an effort to happen, it will need a bigger buy in from our high school districts to provide the technology and the infrastructure to teach cyber warriors. While our community needs plumbers, auto mechanics and medical administrators, it will also need more students like Orsack and Gibbons to protect our information systems.

Here’s hoping that San Antonio tech leaders along with the educational leadership of our local school boards continue to support CyberPatriot next year. Yet, a fundamental change in curriculum and technology change is also needed.